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Saturday, 3 February 2018

I was pleased to discover Walter's stories on commuterlit.com and he agreed to be our guest this week and share one of his tales, as well as what inspired it.

Walt
Giersbach’s fiction and articles have appeared in more than a score of print
and online magazines.Two volumes of
short stories, Cruising the Green of
Second Avenue, have been published by Wild Child.He also served for three decades as director
of communications for Fortune 500 companies, helped publicize the Connecticut
Film Festival, managed publicity and programs for Western Connecticut State
University’s Haas Library, and moderates a writing group in New Jersey.Living in Taiwan
for a year gave him a second home.Having
an Asian-born spouse immediately placed him in the enviable cultural position
of sharing in two worlds and celebrating twice as many holidays.

I
completed “Test of English as a Foreign Language” several years ago, but the germ
of the story has gnawed at me for many years — actually since 1979 when I returned
to Taiwan on a business trip.I met up
with my wife’s girlfriend who had married an American, lived severalyears in the States, and came back when her
husband was reassigned to Taiwan.It was
poignant when I saw her treated as an American hwa-chiao (foreigner on a homeland visit) in
Taipei’s marketplace, but as a bargirl when she tried calling her husband stationed
at a military post.

She
was no longer Taiwanese and not yet American.Of the many stories I know about bi-national people, this one stood out.

I
wondered if perhaps we’re all expatriates of one sort of another as we swim
through any murky pool filled with strangers.I’ve always had a creepy feeling about being a tourist — buying a
vacation, looking confused in a new city, acting gawky and “foreign.”Perhaps it’s because I used to scorn the
clots of people clustered in midtown Manhattan, holding maps and looking at the
skyscrapers as though waiting for God to be their Gray Lines tour guide.While I was rushing across town on some
mission of capital importance, I’d have to stop and detour around these Ausländers in their blousy sports shirts
and khaki shorts.

So
add to the expatriate syndrome in “Test of English” the despair of a dead child
and a divorced husband and you have the making of a universal tension.Key to writing the story was the characters’ realizing
how hard it is to be accepted.Rightly
or wrongly, Shirley felt Americans were “predisposed to believe that American
men only married bargirls.”Orville,
too, had difficulty with his environment, saying, “It was all getting to
me.The telephones and car horns.Fire sirens, even chatter at parties.It was all like a toothache. It was getting
on my nerves.”

How
can feeling like a stranger be otherwise when store clerks answer an expat’s question
by turning to her spouse, when locals are perplexed by an unfamiliar accent, or
when an in-law ingratiatingly says all children or women in [insert country
name] are beautiful or intrinsically smart or better at sports?These are the preconceptions — if not
prejudices — that all Asians are good at math (and, by extension, at gambling),
that immigrants must all have come from a certain class or occupation, and that
some people have in-born diet preferences.

Let
me make a case that there’s a universal feeling of discomfort among expatriates,
beginning with Moses coming back to Egypt announcing, “I
have been a stranger in a strange land.”Granted, it’s easier to be an expatriate in the U.S. than, say, in an
insular nation like Japan.America is a
nation of immigrants.A Hungarian
engineer once told me, “I worked in Germany for several years, but to them I
was always a Hungarian.In the U.S., I’m
called a ‘new American.’”

“Test of English as a Foreign Language” tries to approach this
situation of apartness.Writers feel
compelled to connect with people, to cross cultural bridges, and to obliterate
barriers.Perhaps through writing and
reading — passing our test of English as a foreign language — we can all become
assimilated.For aren’t we all “new
Americans” in one way or another?

Test of English as a Foreign Language

Why bother to go
to the Bowlerama, she wondered. It smelled of people’s feet, the sound of balls
hitting the pins jangled her nerves, and she never beat her 168 game years ago at
Lackland Air Force Base in Texas. Still she returned once a month or so, almost
always by herself. At least there was physical action, exercise. In a few days
it would be 1972. She should be doing something, anything, tonight.

Strangers
— they were mostly strangers in this upstate town on the Hudson River — would
stare at her figure, still fit at the age of forty-one. Occasionally, as these
very white, often loud wai-guo ren
struggled for small talk, they would say offhandedly “You’re tall for a Chinese
woman.” Men would ask, “You married? What unit’s he in?” They never wondered
what she did for a living, whether she had gone to school, where she worked.
They assumed she was an enlisted man’s wife who spent her days at the NCO club.

And
more assumptions. That she’d been a bargirl in Kaohsiung or Taipei, hooking
sailors or soldiers to buy her drinks. They were primed to believe that
American men only married bargirls.

Whenever
she returned to her parents’ in Yung Ho City, outside of Taipei, the
shopkeepers made assumptions, too. They knew from signals given off by her
clothes or hair or gestures, that she was American or at least a hwa-chiao on a homeland visit.

“Hey, Shirley,”
the assistant manager called from behind the desk. He waved when she looked up.
A year ago, he’d told her, “Surely, you’re kidding,” when she ordered a pair of
size ten bowling shoes. “Shirley? How did you know my name?” she asked. It had
been a standing joke. Of course, Ronald the slacker would be in charge. It was
Christmas Eve. Who on earth would be bowling on Christmas Eve?

There was a young
woman with him, chewing gum and leaning over the counter so her breasts hung on
her crossed arms. She would go home with the assistant manager.

Shirley chose a
ball from the ladies’ rack, hefted it and tried several others before she found
one to fit her long fingers. She loved the colors of the balls, especially the
blue, agate-toned ones. The balls were smooth and impermeable to her feelings,
the sweat of her palms, even her hurt and anger.

She was the only
player tonight. Everyone in Newburgh would be at home, except for those on duty
at Stewart Air Force Base. A cough made her turn to the banquette that formed a
horseshoe-shaped arena behind her lane. Players usually extended courtesies to
each other, careful not to invade a bowler’s single-minded concentration or
their wish to bowl alone.

“Guess we’re the
only ones here. Want to play together?”

The man wore
civilian clothes, but his short haircut telegraphed the fact that he was
military. Because no one else was playing, ordinary courtesies here might be
suspended tonight, Christmas Eve.

“Okay, I guess.”
She wasn’t attracted to short hair. It brought back too many memories, and this
man had cut his almost to fuzz — like a five o’clock shadow on his head. Her
own hair still fell below her shoulders and was brushed to a silky dark shine —
not black, but the color of mahogany.

“I’m Orville,” the
man said. “Got off duty and haven’t found a party worth going to. And you?”

“I’m Shirley.”

His eyes went up
and down her body, slowly. “Ni shr
Chung-hwo ren?”

His accent was
terrible. Americans could never form their lips around foreign languages. “Yes,
I’m Chinese. Taiwanese, but American citizen.”

“You met your husband
in Taiwan. I was there once.” This man seemed proud of his reasoning. She knew what
he thought. Any Asian woman must have been brought by a husband to the Land of
the Big PX, full of glorious stores, fully stocked supermarkets, lots of TV
channels. “Family?” he asked.

“No husband. No
kids. Not any more, so you do not need to feel nervous.” She flipped her hair
back. It was a gender symbol of defiance. She could say the word “divorce” as
easily now as she could talk about the price of bread and eggs going up because
of President Nixon. Quiet anger soaked all conversations about the economy,
politics, war, the culture. Perhaps it was frustration over not being sure any
path wasn’t aimless. Other things were harder to speak of, like the body bags being
unloaded from the C-47 Skytrains. Like the little coffin that had contained her
son. The airmen sometimes called the airplanes Gooney Birds, an undignified way
of referring to an airborne coffin.

She bowled an
entire game without speaking to the man, with none of the chatter about missing
a split, keeping your wrist straight or ending your approach with your toe on
the same spot. Occasionally, he turned and gave her an open smile, one without
meaning. This made her wonder if she’d hurt his feelings, whether he was now asking
how the hell to get to the next step with this cold bitch. Or maybe he was just
dense and stupid.

He ended with a
score of 210, but she wasn’t apologetic about her 134. When she bowled, she
felt no competition. A score was just a place mark, digits that told her the
balls had hit the pins or they hadn’t. Like so many things now, it was a matter
of no consequence.

“Can I buy you a
cup of coffee?” he asked. “It’s too soon to go to sleep.”

She took a moment
to digest the fact that he hadn’t said go
to bed, which could be an invitation filled with a great many presumptions.
“Sleep comes when it comes,” she answered. “Sleep is like a cat you are chasing
to bring it home. It doesn’t want to be caught.”

Surprisingly,
Orville didn’t guide her to the bowling alley bar and coffee shop where a few people
were nursing drinks. He took her to his car and drove her through the thin snow
down Route 9W to a restaurant.

“Favorite place of
mine,” he said parking and walking around to open her door. “The owner came
from Tuscany. That’s in Italy. When I was in language school, assigned to NATO,
I really fell in love with Italy. As a kid, I moved around a lot. I never
really had a home. So,” he laughed, “I find places I really like and call them
home. Really.”

“You say really a lot, don’t you?” She didn’t
chide him. It was simply an observation. Really
meant a person might not be terribly sure of his or her reality.

He paused to roll
her comment around in his mind, the way a person might try a strange dish on
his tongue. “Really means it’s the truth and there’s no other
interpretation.”

The man was an
agreeable surprise — so far — on Christmas Eve. There had been other Christmases
and surprises that hadn’t been so nice. Her husband Whit had often gotten
drunk, and Christmas was an especially good excuse to get stinko, get mad, and
then slam the front door on his way out of the house. Her simple response,
after the pain and humiliation of having Whit walk naked in front of her
parents, was to say He is sick, sick in
the heart and the soul — and he doesn’t know it.

The restaurant was
almost empty, but had comfortable warmth from the votive candles and linens on
the tables. It was like a church for the disenchanted, or maybe Italian ghosts.
When Orville had seated her at a table, she decided she wanted a brandy. “Who
can drink coffee on Christmas Eve?” She said it with what she hoped was a light
tone.

“I agree
completely,” he said, signaling the owner. “Cognac — Hennessey VSOP if you have
it.”

“You know,” she
said, “the best seller in Hong Kong is brandy. No one drinks vodka or gin. No
Chinese. Only the English.”

“Really?”

“Brandy is the
color of gold. I learned that when I went there on R and R.”

“You were on R and
R?”

“No. Sorry. I went
with my husband. He was an alcoholic, so now I don’t drink. Almost never.”

The waiter placed
the drinks and Orville silently toasted Shirley. “I wonder if being an
alcoholic is just a substitute for wanting love. That’s what psychiatrists
say.”

She took a quick
sip, wet her lips and leaned forward. “You can think of all the substitutes you
want.” She searched for the words. “There is no substitute for looking things
in the eye. Not backing away. Not giving up. I was married and lost my husband.
I had a son and lost him. I had education in Taiwan and stateside, I have a
green card and earn my living as an accountant. I pay my own rent — no alimony.
I have never given up.”

“I admire that,”
he said. “I admire you holding on and fighting back.”

“Now, tell me
about yourself.”

He shrugged. Was
it humility or an affectation? She didn’t want to know too much about this
Orville, why he was so smart in language school and still in the military. And
why he was alone on Christmas Eve. Knowing too much about someone tied you to him
with a knot. Talking led to feelings of closeness, and closeness led to
attachments. It was a triangle that could wind around your neck like a rope and
drag you under water. Her husband, her son, this American dream world all
threatened to pull her under the waves to an inviting cool darkness that
spelled submission.

“I was raised in
the south, in Texas.”

She nodded,
remembering Lackland.

“I did the usual
stuff. High school and college and then….” His voice trailed off and he
impulsively lifted the Cognac to his lips. “I kind of had a breakdown. Nerves,
the doctor said. I quit college.” He lifted the glass again. “See, it was all
getting to me. The telephones and car horns. Fire sirens, even chatter at
parties. It was all like a toothache. It was getting on my nerves.I just wanted to…yank that fucking tooth out.”
He muttered an apology for saying fuck. “It was static in my head. Static, like
a radio station that isn’t tuned in right. ”

Shirley stared,
hoping she appeared sympathetic.

He shrugged again.
“I quit school and joined the Air Force. I was good at languages. I learned to
speak schoolbook Spanish as a kid. Even studied French out of a book I got at a
library sale. When they gave me the language test,” he laughed, “it was nothing
but Esperanto!”

She nodded her
head, not knowing what Esperanto was, but he seemed to take it as understanding.

“I was that way
with business,” she said. “Accounting. Numbers are easy.”

Unbelievably, he
said maybe it was a racial ability. “I never knew a Chinese who wasn’t good at
business.”

“Like gambling, they
say.”

He wasn’t ignorant,
this Orville. He absorbed information, like the smattering of pidgin Chinese he
had picked up. “It’s all communication. Italian, Chinese. Just another way
people relate to each other. Sign language, body language. Even the clothes
they wear. The red sweater you have.” He pointed to Shirley’s breasts. “Happy
color. Positive. Outgoing and gregarious.”

“Christmassy,” she
explained. “Not dressing like an FOB.”

“What?”

“Fresh off the
Boat Chinese girl.”She decided he
talked too much. Maybe it was to drown out this static in his head. She wanted
to go home and make a cup of tea. The Cognac was making her head woozy, but
being with this man was something, and on Christmas Eve something — someone — was
better than the vacuum of reading a book or calling Taiwan to speak to her
mother. Orville wasn’t a bad person or a stupid person. Just something she
couldn’t find the English word for.

“Is Shirley your
real name or one you picked up, you know, for convenience?” He had changed the
subject again.

A very direct
question, but not entirely unexpected in this land of pioneers and cowboys
where there was no time for nuance. “He was teaching an ESL class. Teaching
wasn’t his Air Force job. It was something to do when he was off duty. I was
studying for my TOEFL to get into college here.”

TOEFL brought a
frown to his face.

“Test of English
as a Foreign Language.”

***

Orville was
perfunctory in his love-making.Short in
duration, attentive but not offering any illusions. Each of them needed to be
satisfied in some way as the snow fell outside, and this was a simple
expedient. Shirley got up afterwards and went into the bathroom to wash. Then
she returned to Orville’s bed while he went in. When he returned, she thought
about putting on her bra and panties, although there was no reason. It was no
matter to her now whether she remained nude or dressed, whether he wanted to
make love again or not, whether she stayed there or went home.

“I was just
thinking,” the man said. “About movies. You know what I like about Chinese
movies?” He didn’t wait for an answer. “They have really great characters.
Great subtle story lines.”

“Plot?”

“Plot, yes. I
didn’t know if you knew that word, so I said. . . .”

“My degree is in
accounting, but I read a lot.”

He sat on the edge
of the bed and began waving his hands in enthusiasm. “The thing with Chinese
movies now is that they imitate American films. The subtlety has disappeared
since they made Crouching Tiger.”

“That was made by
a Taiwanese.” She looked at his face more closely, approvingly, in spite of his
ridiculous haircut.

“Americans want a
snappy ending. Real closure that wraps up all the loose ends. Aaand,” he drew out the word to
emphasize it, “they prefer the ending have fiery explosions and bodies flying
through the air. There has to be some guy who was shot, but he sits up with a
gun and has to be killed for good. And the hero needs to say a catchy phrase
then, like ‘Make my day’ or ‘I told you smoking’s bad for your health.’” He
laughed. “Surprise endings. Something that makes the audience say, ‘Shit, I
wasn’t expecting that.’”

She stared at him.
“Closure?”

“Ending.
Finality.” The man seemed disappointed that she hadn’t responded to his
critique of movie-making. He reached over and fondled her breast, and he
mounted her again, but he couldn’t get an erection so they lay side by side.

***

“So, let me get
this straight,” he said. They had gotten dressed and were driving back to Newburgh.
The snow was a silent blessing over the world, a promise that the children
would have a white Christmas when they woke up. “You and your ex met in Taiwan
and then you both came to the States?”

“Lackland, then
Stewart. Then he was reassigned back to Taipei. I went with him. My parents were
there. I knew a U.S. accounting firm here so I came back. Afterwards.”

“And your child.
What happened?”

“It’s a long
story. Some other time, maybe.”

“You know,” he
said. “I was in Taiwan. TDY for two months. Maybe I knew your husband. What’s
his name?”

“Whit. Whit Lee.”

“Whit? What kind
of name is that?”

She shrugged.
“Whitman, I think. We lived in Tien Mou. Outside Taipei.”

He shook his head.
There was no recognition.

“This is my place,”
she said. It was a two-lane street lined with one-story houses in a vaguely
Cape Cod style. The snow and darkness made them look more identical than they
would otherwise. Snow and darkness treated people the same way.

“I hate to say
good night,” the man said. “We’re just getting to know each other. Can I come
inside?”

“No, not tonight.
But we can talk for a minute or two. Then I have to go.”

“So you mentioned
a kid. Your child. Where’s he — or she? Taiwan?”

She sighed and
watched the snow begin to thicken on the windshield like sticky rice. “I had
gone to work, to do the accounting at a friend’s business in Taipei. I left my
husband to take care of our little boy. He was one year old. Whit got drunk and
fell asleep on the couch with a cigarette. He burned down the house and killed
our son. He escaped. Our son could not. That’s why we’re divorced.”

“Holy shit,” the
man said. “That’s terrible.”

She grimaced. “Closure.
You weren’t expecting that.” She opened the door and got out. “Thank you for a
very nice time. Watch out for the static.”

“Can I see you
again?”

What a stupid
question, she thought. They would see each other or not. She turned back to the
car. “In your movie, about the guy who’s supposed to be dead but isn’t. Should
I have killed my husband?”

“Closure. End of
story.”

“I think in a
Chinese movie I would have killed myself.”

Thank you Walter for being our guest and for your excellent story.I mentioned above that Walter has other stories published on commuterlit. com and you find them here

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Wall of War

Allan Hudson

About Me

My mother taught me to read, to like books, when I was very young. She also taught me how to write. I grew up in the country, even went to a one-room school which was right across the road from our house. She was the teacher. The days I missed were few.

Writing is so much fun and even though I started later in life, I am so happy to realize my dream. Having this blog so I can share other people's work gives me great pleasure.

I've had many adventures in my life. I've travelled throughout North America, gone skydiving, rock climbing, wilderness camping. I craft stained glass and I enjoy woodworking. I'm blessed with many good friends.

I live in the seaside community of Cocagne, New Brunswick, Canada. My wife's name is Gloria. My son's name is Adam and my stepsons' names are Christopher (Mireille) and Mark (Nathalie) Young. My grandchildren are Matthieu, Natasha and Damien. I love them all.

Thank you for visiting. I hope you enjoy my blog. You can reach me by leaving a comment and/or your email address and I'll respond.

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Wall of War is available at Amazon.com, Amazon.ca, Cover to Cover in Riverview, Cocagne Variety in Cocagne and from the author.

The Douglas Kyle Memorial Award for Fiction

My story - The Ship Breakers - received Honorable Mention in the Douglas Kyle Memorial awards for New Brunswick Writers Federation's short story category. Watch for it with the coming selection of short stories to be published in 2018